Dear all, I received a great question with regard to the papers.I wish to share my answer with you all, since this is, in my opinion, very very important in our field.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Hello Jingwei,After reading through the paper I have a question."To make these new fuels economically viable, we must tap into inexpensive carbon sources"What sources of carbon does your lab prefer? Currently the least expensive biomass comes from corn, where the majority of the energy is stored as cellulose in the stalk of the plant. The fuel producing bacterium is currently having trouble digesting 5-Carbon sugars, let alone cellulose. If the fuel producers currently can only process the vast minority of the biomass, how can this fuel method stay economically competitive? Are their methods of decomposing cellulose into 6-Carbon sugars? If the bacterium can only convert a very small portion of the energy from the biomass into usable fuel, then other energy storage methods are likely to be cheaper.
My response:-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You just asked one of the top two Billion Dollar questions, if not trillion.I want to answer in two angles:1. As entrepreneurs, we look at technology trajectory rather than technologies currently available. "The best way to predict the future is to create it." We try to image the world 10 years or even 20 years later, and then we work damn hard to create it. If we have all the elements available today for such a grand challenge, someone would have piece things together a long long time ago.2. But there is a difference between hype and reality. There is also a huge difference between an idea and an opportunity. If you have time, I would like to point you to two major papers on the feedstock question and a TED talk video. Note that these are all really really smart people in this world. I won't push my personal opinion, I will let the numbers speak for themselves. In the end, I wish you can listen to different points and decide for yourself. Current understanding is biofuel is 20 years away from commercialization. But there are always black swan events that may miraculously shorten the timeline, it can come as early as 2016.
As for me, I guess my attitude towards biofuel is quite clear: my research is about biorenewable chemicals, not biofuels. (I try really hard to understand my limitations and want to work on something that may be achievable within a reasonable time span ~ 7-10 years.)
Yours,Jingwei Zhang Further Information:
1) Somerville, C. (2007). Biofuels Current biology : CB, 17(4), R115–9. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2007.01.010
2) Somerville, C., Youngs, H., Taylor, C., Davis, S. C., & Long, S. P. (2010). Feedstocks for lignocellulosic biofuels Science (New York, NY), 329(5993), 790–792.
I received a great question with regard to the papers.I wish to share my answer with you all, since this is, in my opinion, very very important in our field.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Hello Jingwei,After reading through the paper I have a question."To make these new fuels economically viable, we must tap into inexpensive carbon sources"What sources of carbon does your lab prefer? Currently the least expensive biomass comes from corn, where the majority of the energy is stored as cellulose in the stalk of the plant. The fuel producing bacterium is currently having trouble digesting 5-Carbon sugars, let alone cellulose. If the fuel producers currently can only process the vast minority of the biomass, how can this fuel method stay economically competitive? Are their methods of decomposing cellulose into 6-Carbon sugars? If the bacterium can only convert a very small portion of the energy from the biomass into usable fuel, then other energy storage methods are likely to be cheaper.
My response:--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You just asked one of the top two Billion Dollar questions, if not trillion.I want to answer in two angles:1. As entrepreneurs, we look at technology trajectory rather than technologies currently available. "The best way to predict the future is to create it." We try to image the world 10 years or even 20 years later, and then we work damn hard to create it. If we have all the elements available today for such a grand challenge, someone would have piece things together a long long time ago.2. But there is a difference between hype and reality. There is also a huge difference between an idea and an opportunity. If you have time, I would like to point you to two major papers on the feedstock question and a TED talk video. Note that these are all really really smart people in this world. I won't push my personal opinion, I will let the numbers speak for themselves. In the end, I wish you can listen to different points and decide for yourself. Current understanding is biofuel is 20 years away from commercialization. But there are always black swan events that may miraculously shorten the timeline, it can come as early as 2016.
As for me, I guess my attitude towards biofuel is quite clear: my research is about biorenewable chemicals, not biofuels. (I try really hard to understand my limitations and want to work on something that may be achievable within a reasonable time span ~ 7-10 years.)
Yours,Jingwei Zhang
Further Information:
1) Somerville, C. (2007). Biofuels Current biology : CB, 17(4), R115–9. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2007.01.010
2) Somerville, C., Youngs, H., Taylor, C., Davis, S. C., & Long, S. P. (2010). Feedstocks for lignocellulosic biofuels Science (New York, NY), 329(5993), 790–792.